by Chris Ewan
‘At least wait until you see the hotel. Stay a night and see how you feel.’
‘I suppose I’m going to have to.’
‘So you might as well enjoy yourself, right?’
‘Hmm,’ she replied, and turned from me to study the shimmering lake outside the Bellagio. The famous dancing fountains weren’t performing their hourly routine at that particular moment (it would have been too much to ask), but it was an impressive sight all the same.
‘We’re almost there. Trust me. You’re going to love it.’
And do you know what? She actually did. A lot of that had to do with how staggered she was by her first glimpse of the Fifty-Fifty, and her reaction was easy to understand. The main hotel building was a curved fin of smoked glass, fifty storeys in height, that happened to be topped by a revolving restaurant. Above the restaurant, and spinning in counterpoint, was a giant 50-cent piece.
It was really quite something, as were the Broadway-style marquee bulbs above the main entrance and the vintage American roadsters that gleamed and shimmered in the marble foyer. And it didn’t hurt that the service we received at check-in was impeccable, nor that our junior suites were plenty capable of rendering us speechless.
Happily enough, things only improved when I treated Victoria to dinner in a kitsch hotel restaurant. The Test Site Trailer was designed to look like the interior of a classic Airstream caravan, with vinyl seating booths, chromium-edged tables and, appropriately enough, a Mushroom Cloud Soda Fountain. Our Atomic Burgers and Fallout Fries had been delivered to our table by a waitress on roller skates, and by the time I’d ordered a second round of boozy Meltdown Milkshakes, I might even go so far as to say that we were on the very best of terms.
So of course, I chose that moment to spoil it all by telling Victoria how I planned to conclude our evening with a game of no-limit poker.
‘Oh, but you mustn’t, Charlie,’ she said, in a surprisingly earnest tone.
‘Oh, but I must. This is Vegas, Vic. You practically have to play poker here. I think it’s the law.’
Victoria pursed her lips around her drinking straw and slurped her milkshake. ‘But you don’t know how.’
‘I do.’
‘Since when?’
‘Since I began playing online.’
Victoria gagged and spluttered, and I feared a stream of milkshake might spurt from her nose.
‘I’ll have you know I’ve made fifty-eight dollars since I first started out.’
‘And when was that?’ she croaked.
‘Six months ago.’
She dabbed her lips with a paper napkin and cleared her throat. ‘How peculiar that your writing seems to have stalled during that time.’
‘Pure coincidence.’
I pushed the remains of my hamburger aside, reached for the bill and scrawled my room details in the appropriate spot.
Victoria rested her fingers on my good hand and gave me a searching look, seemingly unaware of the gob of milkshake on her chin. ‘You know I don’t agree with gambling, Charlie.’
‘That’s why I’m not asking you to take part.’
She frowned and contemplated the depths of her milkshake, as though she might find a more compelling argument somewhere beneath the vanilla froth. Just as she went to speak again, the mock window to our side bloomed with a flickering white light and our table began to tremble and shake. I wasn’t alarmed. An information sign beside the entrance had promised a simulated atomic explosion every half-hour. Sure enough, a thunderous rumble played over the stereo system, interrupting the early rock ’n’ roll we’d been listening to, and our waitress shrieked and trundled beneath a nearby table in a truly woeful piece of acting.
In time, the noise and the shaking faded away, and our waitress re-emerged and dusted herself down, leaving Victoria to continue as if nothing had happened.
‘Has it occurred to you that you could be exploited? There is such a thing as professional gamblers. They come to places like this and they prey on novices.’
‘It’s a reputable casino, Vic. There’s a staff dealer on every table.’
‘You still need to be careful.’
‘Point taken.’
‘Know how much you’re prepared to risk before you sit down. And don’t even consider exceeding your limit.’
‘Okay, Mum.’
Ah, the narrow-eyed assassin’s glare. I’d been waiting for that one to make an appearance.
‘I’m only looking out for your best interests, Charlie.’
‘I know that, and I appreciate it,’ I told her. ‘But what do you take me for? A complete idiot?’
FOUR
I was a complete idiot.
No, the poker didn’t turn out as well as I’d hoped. In fact, the poker went very badly indeed. I still had my shirt and my complimentary Budweiser, but I didn’t have a great deal else, and one thing I positively didn’t have was any of the money I’d made in New York. Every last cent that my Brooklyn contact had paid me was gone, and while some of it had already been spent on our trip to Vegas and Victoria’s ticket home to London, the rest had been scooped into the arms of a mirthless cowboy with a Buffalo Stetson, a bolo tie and a handlebar moustache. Seriously. It was one thing to lose, but losing to a cliché was really tough to swallow.
It’s hard to pinpoint where it all went wrong, short of my sitting down in the first place. I suppose I didn’t play tight to begin with – for which I blame the Meltdown Milkshakes – and my opening stake was gone so quickly that I felt compelled to buy back in. Some dumb part of my psyche figured it would be embarrassing to stand up and walk away early in the game, without considering how daft I’d feel leaving with nothing a half-hour later. In my defence, I had some bad luck, and it’s not often you see a straight flush (as held by the cowboy) and a full house (as held by yours truly) in a game of Texas Hold ’Em. I had the guy figured for Trips at best, which is why I went all-in after he raised me on the River. Hell, I don’t know, maybe my errors had something to do with playing real opponents for once, instead of a collection of pixels named Dark Dawn or Amarillo2000.
Whatever the explanation, I was a good deal poorer than when I’d last seen Victoria and I was in a pretty foul mood to boot. I idly considered circling the tables to see if anyone was enjoying better luck, but it didn’t strike me as the surest way to cheer myself up. A more tempting option was to head outside for one of the free Strip spectaculars – the erupting Volcano at the Mirage, perhaps, or the saucy female pirates waging naval warfare at TI. Practically anything had to be better than returning to my room and having Victoria drop by to say, ‘I told you so.’
On the subject of Victoria, I was really quite confused by her attitude to gambling. Sure, I’d just become the latest casualty of the vice, but I couldn’t deny the thrill I’d taken from that final hand – at least until I’d lost. And if her objection was a moral thing, her thinking was mighty peculiar, because she’d never seemed very troubled by my sideline in burglary. Then again, she had mentioned that not gambling was a family rule, so perhaps it was something that had been drummed into her in childhood. She’d once told me that her father was a judge, which didn’t exactly suggest a relaxed upbringing.
In any case, she’d been very clear that she didn’t approve of my foray among the gaming-tables, so you can imagine my surprise when I heard a raucous whoop and a squeal, only to glance to my right and find someone who looked just like her leaping in delight from behind a high-stakes roulette-table.
I knuckled my eyes. The woman had the same shade of brown hair as Victoria, cut to the same length and curled in around her shoulders in the same style. She had on a similar green blouse and charcoal pencil skirt, teamed with a familiar-looking green handbag. Her height and frame were strangely alike, and she had some of Victoria’s mannerisms down pat.
The Doppelgänger held her arms above her head and bounced on her toes while the croupier smiled at her indulgently. He wasn’t alone. There were six players seated around the tabl
e and they all seemed utterly charmed. Most enchanted of all was a guy with dazzling white teeth, a flawless tan and showpiece hair. He wore stonewashed jeans over alligator cowboy boots, a plain white T-shirt and a tan leather jacket.
The handsome hunk wrapped Victoria’s double in his gym-muscle arms and lifted her clean from the floor. She giggled and beat down playfully on his shoulders, meanwhile bending her legs at the knee.
In almost no time at all, I seemed to be standing alongside them, and so I reached out and tapped the woman on the shoulder. She whipped her head around and blinked, and then she covered her mouth with her hand and said, ‘Oh God, Charlie,’ with the kind of alarm I might have expected if I’d just broken into her home.
‘Who’s your friend?’ I asked.
Victoria blushed and gestured to be set down. She straightened her clothes and adjusted her handbag strap and gingerly motioned towards her muscular beau.
‘Charlie, this is Josh. He’s an illusionist. You’ve probably seen the posters for his show.’
‘Nope, I don’t think so.’
‘Hey, Charlie.’ He clapped me on the shoulder. ‘It’s sure great to meet you.’
Now, allow me to come clean and admit right away, just in case you haven’t picked up on the subtle clues that I’ve weaved into my account, that I disliked Josh Masters instantly. When Victoria introduced us, his greeting was about as genuine as the medieval knights inside the Excalibur casino, and his eyes weren’t even pointing in my direction – they were angled towards the roulette-table, calculating the bets he might lay.
Here’s the second reason I didn’t take to him – he was winning very handsomely. Stacks of purple chips were neatly arranged in front of him, looking like the ramparts of a mini-fortress. He also had some of the blue one-hundred-dollar chips, though not as many. They were scattered carelessly around the perimeter of the purple fort like a moat. But then I imagine you can afford to be a little blasé about century tokens when you have something in the region of eighty thousand dollars to wager.
Right at that moment, it was around eighty thousand dollars more than I had to my name. And his left hand, which featured a gold signet ring and a set of finely manicured nails, was resting in the small of Victoria’s back. Now true, we weren’t an item. Victoria was my literary agent and my friend, nothing more. But Josh Masters didn’t know that. He didn’t have the faintest idea. And he evidently didn’t care.
‘So, Josh,’ I ventured, ‘Victoria mentioned you have some kind of magic show?’
‘Right here in the magnificent Fifty-Fifty,’ he drawled, his attention fixed on the roulette felt.
‘So what would you call yourself? A children’s entertainer?’
‘Charlie.’
I swear, Victoria actually spoke in italics. She also gave me a warning look. It was a pretty severe kind of warning look.
‘What?’ I said. ‘I like magic, as it happens.’
‘Since when?’
‘Since I was a kid.’
It was true. In my boarding-school days, I’d taught myself a whole bunch of card tricks, and before too long, I’d reached the stage where I was able to invent some tricks of my own. That was just how my mind worked. I was a kid who liked puzzles, and magic was exactly the kind of activity that entertained me when the other boys were out playing rugby or cricket or kiss-chase (and this despite, or maybe because, it was a single-sex school). Well, magic and learning to pick locks, but you get the idea.
As it happens, I was quite proud of my card play, and every so often I’d put on a small performance in my dorm. Over the years, I developed a reputation as a bit of a conjurer. So perhaps in some ways Josh Masters and I were kindred spirits. I guess that could be another reason why I hated his guts.
‘Let me show you a trick,’ I said. ‘It’s a real corker.’
‘Thanks, buddy, but I’m good.’
‘Humour me, why not. Do you have a deck of cards and a pen I could borrow?’
Josh sighed and rubbed his face with his hand. ‘Listen – Chaz, is it?’
‘Charlie.’
‘Right. I’m kinda busy here.’ He jerked his eyebrows towards the roulette wheel. ‘So . . .’
‘So?’
‘Maybe another time.’
‘But it’s a good trick.’
‘Hey, I’m sure it’s terrific.’
‘Then why don’t you let me perform it?’
‘Charlie,’ Victoria cut in. ‘Josh has a very successful show here at the casino.’
‘And?’
‘And he must get people wanting to show him tricks all the time.’
Josh slapped me on the arm, as though that was the end of the matter, then turned to the roulette felt and started to lay some bets. He placed ten purples on red, plus another eight scattered across the numbered squares.
I pointed my thumb at his back and leaned towards Victoria.
‘What’s his problem?’
‘He doesn’t have one. He’s offered us free tickets for his show tonight. Which is really generous of him, don’t you think?’
No, I didn’t think it was spectacularly generous, not when I considered the amount of chips he was setting down. But at least there was one consolation – as he reached across the table, I thought I could see hair plugs dotting his scalp. I was about to mention it to Victoria when he turned back and pressed two more purple chips into her palm.
‘Get lucky.’ He lifted her hand and kissed her fingers.
Victoria chewed her lip and gazed at him excitedly, before turning her attention to the table. After a moment’s hesitation, she laid both chips on the corner between red 16 and 19, and black 17 and 20. A thousand dollars, at odds of eight to one. I was about to ask her what on earth she was doing when every other player at the table stacked their chips on top.
An elderly woman in a gold lamé jacket caught my eye. She gripped the pearls that ringed her turkey-flesh neck.
‘Your friend is a real lucky pill.’
‘Is that right?’
‘Oh sure. She’s been on a hot streak.’
The croupier spun the roulette wheel clockwise and flicked the ball in the opposite direction. I watched it whiz around in a pale blur until it began to lose momentum.
‘No more bets,’ the croupier murmured. He was a scrawny type with a slicked-down side-parting and an acne-scarred face that was perfectly in keeping with the gangster theme. ‘Bets are closed.’
‘Thought you didn’t gamble,’ I said to Victoria.
‘Not my money,’ she replied, as if that explained everything.
The ball clacked and bounced off one of the tiny metal spurs that dotted the wheel, then pitched and dropped into red 19.
And then it popped out.
‘Red Eighteen,’ the croupier mumbled, leaning forward to gather in the losing chips with his spindly arms.
A collective groan went up from the table. Victoria winced and offered an apologetic look to the elderly lady.
‘I’m so sorry.’
‘Don’t be, honey. You won me plenty.’ The lady gathered together her not-inconsiderable pile of chips and tossed a hundred-dollar marker to the croupier. ‘Goodnight, y’all.’
Victoria turned to Josh. ‘Apologies to you, too.’
‘Hey, don’t sweat it. We won on red, remember?’
Victoria swivelled and gawped at the table. She clapped her hands in delight.
‘How much did we win?’
‘You doubled your stake,’ I said, trying not to sound too bitter.
‘Came out even,’ Masters corrected me. ‘Allows us to dance another day.’
He winked at Victoria and I swallowed down the bile that had just risen in my throat before reaching for the strap of her handbag and giving it a tug.
‘Shall we go?’
‘Oh.’ She glanced at Masters. ‘I think I may stay for a while. And like I said, Josh has given us tickets to his show.’
‘Front-row seats,’ he added.
‘Yes,
front-row seats. His assistant has come down with a bug, you see, and he needs a volunteer to help him with one of his illusions.’
‘And what – that volunteer is you?’
‘I thought it might be fun.’
Victoria and Masters shared a look. It wasn’t the type of look I relished seeing them share, and I sure as hell didn’t want them to share anything more.
‘Hey, Chaz, how’d you like to run a bet with some of my chips?’
‘It’s Charlie,’ I told him. ‘And I don’t bet with other people’s money.’
‘Is that right? Well, you know the minimum stake at this table is five hundred dollars?’
I was just about to tell Masters where he could shove a handful of his purple-coloured chips when Victoria interrupted us.
‘Roulette’s not really Charlie’s game. He’s more of a poker player.’
‘Is that right? Say, you’re not one of these folks who plays on the internet, are you? A lot of newbies get caught that way.’
I fixed a smile to my face. ‘Thanks for the warning.’
‘How did you do, by the way?’ Victoria asked. ‘You haven’t been gone very long.’
‘Oh, I decided to pass in the end. Thought you might fancy a stroll around the Venetian. Maybe a drink in St Mark’s Square?’
Victoria scrunched up her face. ‘But I’ve already said that I’ll take part in Josh’s show. It starts in an hour – right, Josh?’
‘Uh huh. Unless you win big enough for me to quit.’
He pressed two more purple chips into Victoria’s palm. She looked between us.
‘You don’t mind, do you?’
‘Mind? Why would I mind?’
‘And you’ll come to the show with me?’
I wanted to say no, but she was giving me a new variety of look, a doe-eyed effort that would have made me feel like an absolute heel if I’d said no.
‘If that’s what you want. But I’m going to take a tour of the Venetian first. So I’ll see you inside. Okay?’
‘Perfect.’
Josh snapped his fingers. ‘Chaz, I’ll have your name put down on the ticket counter.’ He flashed a grin at Victoria and wrapped his arm around her shoulders, guiding her back to the table. ‘Now, sweetheart, how about you tell us what number is going to win?’